The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens: Summary and Analysis

The Idea of Order at Key West was written in 1934 by American modernist and the Imagist poet Wallace Stevens. It was included in 'Ideas of Order' and in 'The Collections Poems of Wallace Stevens'. He won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1955.

As the speaker observes, he finds two singers: nature and human. The woman is singing by the shore of the sea. The sea is in the place which she has chosen for singing. The sea is making a constant cry and it was the inhuman cry of the nature, but the singer picks up the cry of the nature and produces her own song. By showing the relationship between the sea and the singer, the poet repeats the romantic claim that art is nothing but the imitation of the nature. We observe the nature, make its imitation and produce a work of art.

The speaker reminds that these two songs are not medley sound. The song of the nature is quite violent and disorder. The singer listens that violent song of that nature and construct order out of that. She brings order in the disordered world. Through this claim the speaker presents the singer as “the single artificer of the world” Art can create order and harmony. He further reminds that she was the maker of this world and there was no world for her except the one singing made. Those remarks reminds us about Coleridge's claim that the artist can construct the castle into the air.

It is one of the tendencies of the modernist to search for the order which Stevens continues. Everywhere there is the rage for the order, but the actual capacity to bring order in the world lies in the work of art. For Stevens, art does have constitutive and redemptive capacity. Stevens is a pagan who does not believe in traditional religions. God and religion cannot bring order in the world. Such order can be introduced only by the work of art. So, Stevens substitutes God with art and religion with the imagination.

There is an irony in the poem that for the complex poem, the plot of the poem is rather simple. When the speaker hears a lady singing by the sea, he was enchanted by her song and the beauty of her song. He starts assimilating beauty of her song with his own life. He experiences a kind of sudden insight within himself. But, it is not stated what kind of epiphany has he got and what he thinks of the lady’s song. Though there is not any trace of a lady’s song, and the speaker has not clearly said about his epiphany, the reader feels transformed as the speaker feels transformed at the end of the poem. The song has converted the speaker and his perception towards the Key West.

Stevens is of the view that poetry has to transform a private vision into a public vision. The female singer in the poem too does the same thing of transformation and this whole poem metaphorically stand for the transformation. The poem is a means of change among the readers, and the poet here wants to bring same changes through his poetry. His poetry successfully represents inexpressible human moments of happiness and insights into human terms. Stevens supports his readers achieve their own wishes to see a richer, fuller world of poetry.